Project Description
This is a portal for all of my tools developed to ease a sharepoint developer/admins job.

Update (12/15/09)

Initially this project was created to point to other projects of mine. After putting a good thought I decided to bring all tools into one spot and build a consolidated tool which encompasses all others. I was able to do a total revamp of the project structure and updated the source code control.
Also uploaded the latest release in the downloads section.

The tool is designed as a multiple document interface (MDI) thus at any given point one can access any tool within single window. Below is the list of the nifty tools built so far:

Tool Description
Here is a nifty tool which can be used to deploy, redeploy, upgrade and retract/delete the solutions in the SharePoint environment. It handles all these jobs using the object model. This tool will be definitely handy for developers for quick deployment while debugging.

Purpose
The best way to get anything or any component into SharePoint environment is by creating a WSP aka Solution file. Many tools exists to create the WSP like WSPBuilder, STSDEV and Andrew Connell’s way of doing it. Having done that the next step would be deploying the same into SharePoint environment. WSPBuilder supports deploying directly though Visual Studio but some times it could get messy. It also limits to the project you set up using WSPBuilder. This tool is built in a generic way which can be used to manage already deployed solutions and also for deploying new solutions. So given a WSP file this tool can help you get that into SharePoint environment.

I agree there is another tool SharePoint Solution Installer on codeplex but I never was happy with that as it didn’t serve the purpose many a times for me. Moreover that tools was closed to administrators.

ShareTools Solution Manager does many things which can be done with stsadm command line tool. Below are a salient list of those:

View existing solutions in our server environment

Add new solutions

Upgrade existing solutions either immediately or at a given time

Redeploy an existing solution if you have a latest WSP of the same solution

Retract and Delete the existing solution

Deploy a new solution with all the parameters used in stsadm command line tool

Execute the administrative timer job definitions i.e stsadm.exe -o execadmsvcjobs with a single click of the button

This tool is an effort towards helping all those who are working on InfoPath Forms with SharePoint. It helps to upload/install, re-install, upgrade a form template with just a click of the button. The tool also can help in generating a script/batch file so that you can run it manually later on. Also, the tool has ‘Feature Management’ addon, using which you can see a list of activated and deactivated features using a filter if needed. It also provides the ability to activate, deactivate and uninstall a feature.
You can get the tool and read more about it at http://www.codeplex.com/InfoPathFormsInstall
Please let me know of the bugs and enhancements if anyone uses it.
Below is the screen shot of the tool: